


luck is a funny thing

by violentlyout



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Lena Luthor Doesn't Know Kara Danvers is Supergirl, Slow Burn, Slow Burn Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor, Witness Protection
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:01:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27018487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violentlyout/pseuds/violentlyout
Summary: Lena, former CFO and research head at LutherCorp, flees National City after an altercation, with many of Lex’s secrets in tow. She’s placed under protection by the DEO and is relocated to a tiny town in Alaska. Lena must figure out how to decode Lex’s plans and technology with the aid of the DEO, all the while coping with her new life and hiding who she really is. She soon meets someone who helps her find the beauty in Alaska, and they begin to explore the world, themselves, and each other. However, Lex’s plans will continue to advance, and Kara is hiding a secret from Lena that could change everything.The Whittier AU.
Relationships: Alex Danvers & Kara Danvers, Kara Danvers & Lena Luthor, Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Kudos: 34





	luck is a funny thing

**Author's Note:**

> Lena starts a new life.

_Chapter 1: Lena_

_National City Scene_

_LuthorCorp CFO, Research Head to Step Down_

_LuthorCorp reported early Monday that finance and research chief Lena Luthor, sister to CEO Lex Luthor, plans to leave the technology conglomerate giant after 4 years in the position. Ms. Luthor, who took on the role of CFO in addition to her research duties in 2016, did not provide a reason for her departure. Samantha Arias, marketing director for LuthorCorp, was promoted to acting CFO effective immediately following Ms. Luthor’s step down. In an unusual move, Ms. Luthor will not remain as an advisor with the company to facilitate the transition, and has also withdrawn from several nonprofit boards which she was involved with. Mr. Luthor was not immediately available for comment. ~NCS_

“Ladies and gentlemen, we have just been cleared to land at the Anchorage International Airport. Please make sure one last time your seat belt is securely fastened. The flight attendants are currently passing around the cabin to make a final compliance check and pick up any remaining cups and glasses. Local time currently is 6:34 PM and the temperature is a chilly 32 degrees, so I’d recommend you grab your jackets before departing the plane. On behalf of Ferris Air, I’d like to thank you for joining us on this trip and we are looking forward to seeing you on board again in the future. Have a nice stay in Alaska, folks!”

With her forehead pressed against the tiny glass porthole window, Lena sighed as she surveyed the murky fog hiding most of the city below. The future--her new future, apparently--looked bleak. What little she could see was not encouraging. The mountains were beautiful, certainly, and while she didn’t enjoy the water, she could admit the coastal aspect of Anchorage was pretty enough. But the city itself seemed almost devoid of life compared to National City, or even Metropolis. The buildings were small, there was practically no traffic visible as they passed closer to the streets of the city, and she could practically feel the lack of nightlife, the atmosphere undisturbed by seemingly anyone out even in the early evening. 

_Maybe it was the time of day. The evening was still so light, anyway, perhaps people didn’t start going out until later. Maybe it was just the fog?_

Lena nearly chuckled at her own weak internal attempt to be optimistic. Anchorage wasn’t even her final stopping point, and she was already dreading the remoteness, the quietness of it all. For a fleeting moment, she wondered if this was a mistake--if she should’ve stuck it out at LuthorCorp, tried to take down Lex from the inside without him ever noticing. If fleeing to Alaska with as much of Lex’s blueprints and stashed prototypes was necessary, or if she could’ve found some way to talk her brother down, to bring him back from the path he was set upon. But the fresh imprint of Lex’s face, contorted in rage and bearing down on her, entered her mind for not the first time today, and she shook herself out of the pointless train of thought. He wasn’t salvageable. And even if he was, the risk of trying to fix him was too great. Lex was dangerous. She found herself repeating it internally, a mantra: _Lex is dangerous. You did the right thing. Lex is dangerous._ She focused on it as the plane continued to descend, a lifeline to cling to instead of shuddering as the plane landed. 

_Lex is dangerous. You did the right thing._ Pulling her bag from the overhead compartment, standing and waiting awkwardly as fellow passengers shuffled out ahead of her.

_Lex is dangerous. You did the right thing._ Walking purposefully down the concourse, toward the baggage claim, toward the things she stole from Lex and the little she could bring for herself, she almost found herself believing it. 

Until she made eye contact with a hard-eyed woman, ten feet away, staring at her distrustfully, holding a plain white sign stating “Lena Luthor.” 

Lena stopped short for only a moment, barely noticeable, but enough that the woman’s gaze flicked down towards her feet and back up to meet Lena’s eyes. She spoke before Lena could. 

“I’m Agent Danvers. We spoke on the phone.” She kept her voice low, but not to the point where passerby would look over wondering at why someone was muttering in an airport. Dropping the sign, Agent Danvers stuck out a hand to Lena. Lena took it, tentatively, looking over her new acquaintance ( _handler? partner?_ ) as the other woman grasped her hand in a firm handshake. Her hair was short, reddish, and she had angular features. The sternness in her face made her look older at first than she seemed to be--Lena guessed she maybe was only a few years older than her at best. She noted the all-black clothing beneath a cozy fur-lined jacket, and wanted to roll her eyes. This ‘DEO’ group didn’t seem as fond of subtlety as she would prefer them to be, but first impressions weren’t everything. She looked back up to find the agent looking her over in a similar manner, brusquely snapping her chin back up when she realized Lena had noticed. 

“How was your flight?” It came off like a question, but flat, bored, like she didn’t really care about the answer. And indeed, she didn’t seem to, as she walked with Lena to help carry her multiple suitcases outside to a silver station wagon (okay, perhaps a bit more subtle than Lena had originally thought). 

“Long,” Lena answered simply. “Although I think it’s probably long no matter where anyone is coming from.”

Agent Danvers smiled tightly. “Yeah, you could say that. It’s out of the way here.” She motioned to Lena to get into the passenger seat, and climbed into the driver’s side. “We’ve got to get going. It’ll be dark soon, and this is a hell of a drive to make in the dark.”

Lena opened her side of the car, and took stock of the small Petco box sitting on the passenger seat. She glanced up at Agent Danvers, but the other woman was busy cleaning salt residue off the windshield of the car, so she pulled the taped-shut box into her lap as she buckled herself into the weathered seat. 

Before Lena could even ask, Agent Danvers began to rattle off information as she drove them out of the airport. “Alright, so the box here contains most of the information and a good amount of the resources you’ll need to start out. Your new identification, social security number, bank account information, all that--in that first folder. The second folder in there has your study materials. You’ve got a new backstory, new name, new life, and you need to know it like you’ve lived it. You can get a start on reading it while we’ve still got light on the drive. As discussed earlier, you can keep your first name, we didn’t give you much prep time to start responding to anything else and I don’t want anyone suspecting you. Just don’t slip up on anything else.” She glanced over at Lena as they rolled to a stop at a red light, and motioned down at the box, which Lena began to open.

“You’ve also got house keys, but no car keys. Sorry.” Lena noted that she did not look apologetic.

“Can I get a car? If it’s a financial issue, I can obviously provide for that, even with limited resources.”

“No.”

Lena stopped fiddling with the box, and waited. Then prodded.

“No. Why?”

“You probably won’t need it anyway, and frankly, Ms. Luthor, you most likely can’t be trusted with a car up here.”

Lena bristled with barely suppressed anger. “I abandoned my entire life to bring these resources to the DEO, Agent Danvers. I risked everything, including my brother’s wrath, to bring you what I did. I’m not sure where I managed to lose your trust in here, but please, feel free to tell me what else I have to do to earn your trust. I’d stop being a Luthor if you’d like, but you’ve changed my last name for me already.”

Agent Danvers rolled her eyes, and Lena opened her mouth for further argument before the woman cut her off. “Ms. Luthor, have you ever driven in the snow before?”

Lena closed her mouth, shook her head, then realized Danvers was watching the road. “No.”

“Right. So. We’re headed into winter, and the place where you’ll be living has fairly regular snowfall and it doesn’t melt often. That, paired with the fact that it’s in the middle of mountains and there isn’t much road in the first place, makes having a car unnecessary. If you need a ride somewhere, there are plenty of people who will be available. This isn’t about the DEO’s trust in you in general. You having a car and driving is a potential risk to your life and others, and we brought you here to keep you safe.”

“Ah. Fine.” Lena, slightly mollified, turned her attention back to the box in front of her. Unsure of why it was specifically a Petco box, she tore the tape off the top and began looking through the documents mentioned earlier. It contained everything Agent Danvers had mentioned, with her new name being ‘Lena Mercer,’ a generic last name meant to dissuade anyone from knowing who she was. When she’d discussed her relocation with the mysterious Department of Extranormal Operations, she’d originally expressed concern over people possibly recognizing her face as well as her name, as she was occasionally featured in news articles. But she’d received plenty of reassurance that many people were completely unaware of what the average CFO of a company looked like, even one as large as LutherCorp. Lena did mull over changing her haircut or color, or maybe even adding glasses to her typical ensemble, but brushed off the possible tactics as flimsy at best. She simply had to hope that people truly did not pay much attention to local news articles. Besides, she mused, Agent Danvers had assured her that this was a _very_ remote location, and she wouldn’t be in contact with many people anyway. Which is exactly what she wanted.

Lena started reading through her dossier as they drove, rubbing the freshly healed scar along her collarbone absently as she began to memorize the details of Lena Mercer’s life. Graduated in 2019 with her master’s and PhD in environmental biochemistry from University of California-San Diego, recently finished a mid-grade fellowship in San Antonio--Lena rolled her eyes at this, they couldn’t have picked a state she’d been to?--and was now traveling to Alaska on a Navy military contract to work on water quality and ecosystem health in several state parks. The research would be headquartered in…Whittier.

“Where is Whittier? I’ve never heard of it.”

Agent Danvers snorted. “It would be surprising if you had. It’s a tiny little town, in the middle of the mountains, right at the top of the Passage Canal. Not too much else around, but it’s practically impossible to detect the town from above, what with the mountains and the clouds. Oh, uh, that’s another thing to be aware of--there’s not too much sun in Whittier. I’d recommend making sure you have a good amount of waterproofed clothes and some decent snow boots, shoes that grip well, stuff like that.”

Lena suppressed an eye roll. “I think I packed fairly well, but I’ll keep that in mind.” 

“Otherwise, you know, it’s a decent place to live. Decent people. Not too far from Anchorage or anything.” 

“Is that where I’ll be living, as well?”

“Yep. We’ve got a small place for you up on the hill. Two bedrooms, one bathroom, decent sized kitchen, and some furnishings. We’ll leave most of the furniture up to you, although of course, we still aren’t sure how long you’ll need to be here.”

Lena paused, reflecting on the contents of most of her suitcases, and nodded pensively. “Not really a good way to evaluate that until I begin, I think.”

Agent Danvers clicked her tongue, murmuring, “Well, you’d know that better than me.” Clearing her throat, she added quickly, “Of course, the DEO will be supporting you at every step. Can’t express enough how helpful this could be.”

While the agent did her best to keep her tone at a forced level of encouragement, Lena understood the hesitation. It wasn’t as if she’d proven herself to be on one side or the other before; she wasn’t exactly aiding her brother in many of his more controversial efforts, but she wasn’t speaking out against him, either. Even now, the little she’d done was cowardly: stealing what she could over the course of a few weeks, planting a few bugs that were found almost instantly, but still managing to gather a bit more information to gain the DEO’s trust. Well. Trust was a strong term. Acquiring goodwill was a bit more accurate--she’d scratched their back, and here they were scratching hers. All she had wanted was a way out and she got it with a simple promise to continue giving as much information as she could. This wasn’t exactly the out she’d anticipated, but it was better than staying and waiting for Lex’s paranoia to turn on her next. 

Agent Danvers continued driving them in a peaceful silence, if not a companionable one. They left the lights of the city fairly quickly, and the sun set fairly soon afterwards, leaving Lena unable to read the rest of the notes on her new start. She turned her face to the window for the next 45 minutes, as they traveled up a gently sloping highway on the edge of steep, lightly snow-covered hills. They passed several tourists furtively taking photos at a designated point along the bay, trying to take advantage of the last evening light. As twilight quickly faded, Lena could barely catch a glimpse of small white spots moving along one of the hills nearby--she made a mental note to ask Agent Danvers what they were later, not wanting to distract the other woman or break the tentative quiet between them. They left the lights of the city further and further behind, and Lena’s anxiety only grew when they finally slowed to a crawl in front of a small triangular structure, built into the side of a mountain.

“Ah, Agent Danvers?” Lena questioned, reluctant to begin conversation once more. “This doesn’t appear to be our final stopping point.”

Danvers broke into what seemed to be the first genuine grin she’d seen from the woman in the entire hour and a half she’d known her. “Nope, it isn’t, but it _is_ our only way of getting through.”

Lena looked sourly forward, spotting the taillights of a vehicle just barely disappearing through the small entrance within the structure. “You can’t be serious.”

“One road in, one road out. This is the only way to get to Whittier, Ms. Lu--Mercer,” Agent Danvers smirk wavered as she corrected herself. “Don’t worry, it’s our turn, and it’s only about ten minutes.” 

“Ten _minutes_?” Lena hissed, glaring as they drove closer and closer to the mouth of what Lena could only assume was a cave. 

“It’s a one way road, blasted through a mountain. It takes a while to get through, and you have to be safe when you’re going through it. Pedestrians aren’t allowed, but I’ve dragged people out of here before, so you can never be too careful.” Agent Danvers was casual as she pulled the station wagon into the mouth of a cave, and Lena swallowed her retort as she spun awkwardly in the passenger seat. She could’ve opened her window and grazed her hand along the rock walls, though she could barely see even with the dim orange lights above. The ceiling seemed similarly close to the top of the car, and Lena winced at the immediate mental sound of the rock screeching against the metal of the car if the cave just got the slightest bit narrower. Agent Danvers drove steadily through, keeping the car’s tires on the track below. Lena chose not to participate in this particular leg of the journey, and turned her face to the window and closed her eyes, sick to her stomach.

What seemed like an interminable amount of time passed until the light changed, and Lena dared to open her eyes. They were driving along a road alongside a railroad track, and headed into an unremarkable-looking tiny town. Well, largely unremarkable, apart from the solid three inches of packed snow that was already present. Lena strained to remember which bag her warmer jackets were in as Agent Danvers took a right off the main road, driving up a fairly steep hill; the former CFO spotted a few small homes nestled amongst short trees, chimney smoke rising above most of them. The station wagon pulled into park in front of an unassuming, plain cottage. Vines of ivy peered out from among weathered, rust-colored bricks, and the garage behind the house seemed to threaten collapse from the bowing in its roof. At Lena’s face, Agent Danvers hurried to explain, “There’s more than meets the eye here, trust me. I’d recommend checking it out tomorrow, though. Jet lag tends to hit pretty hard here.”

Lena stifled a yawn upon this statement, and nodded in thanks. She extricated herself from the suddenly cramped passenger seat, and stretched before heading to the back of the car to begin lugging her bags into what would be her new home for the foreseeable future. Danvers followed suit, grabbing a few pieces of her luggage at a time and leaving them just inside of the mostly empty living room. There was nothing remarkable about the inside of the cottage, and frankly, Lena was too tired to give it much more than a glance. She double checked her documents and her possessions with Agent Danvers, planning another rendezvous at noon the following day, and had barely said farewell to the other woman before she found herself slumped in her new bed, drifting off to sleep without so much as taking her shoes off.

* * *

Lena squinted at her phone in a haze, barely making out _3:47_ in the too-bright light before dropping her head in a groan. She’d fallen asleep in her clothing from the airplane, and could feel the griminess of travel sticking to her skin like hard water residue. She pulled clothing off slowly as she searched through her bags, looking for a towel, or pajamas, but found only workout clothing and suits in the first bag she chose. She groaned again, and realized too late that she shouldn’t have gotten out of bed in the first place; she was officially too awake to go back to sleep. But it was too early to really do anything else, and she didn’t want to unpack right now--she didn’t even know where most of her belongings were, let alone where she’d end up putting them.

_Well, she might as well make the best of it. What better way to get to know the city she was in by jogging in the early morning and not having to interact with anyone?_

She pulled herself back together sluggishly, finding some of the warmer gear she’d packed and pulling out a random pair of tennis shoes. She laced them up, finding herself being oddly quiet for someone who would be living alone and decently far enough away from neighbors to not worry about any of the noise she was making. An instinct from childhood, she supposed. She finished dressing and grabbed her water bottle from the plane, and sucked in a warm breath before opening the door to the early morning chill air. 

_It wasn’t as bad as she thought it would be_ , she thought to herself, as she began jogging uphill. _Sure, it was a bit cold and dry, and the snow was an unexpectedly difficult surface to jog on, but it wasn’t much worse than trying to dodge endless joggers in a cityscape. She’d never gone running on snow before, but it didn’t feel much different than your average uphill climb._

She managed to make it twenty-two minutes up the hill before catching a patch of ice the wrong way, and slipping haphazardly backwards in what could only be described as a classic slapstick routine. She would’ve laughed, herself, if hitting the ground hadn’t knocked every ounce of breath from her lungs. Lena laid there for a moment, gasping for air, and grimaced as she recalled Agent Danvers recommending ‘snow boots.’ Perhaps she’d had more of a point than Lena had originally realized. She struggled to pull herself to a sitting position, to evaluate the damage. No gashes torn in her leggings, and her shoes seemed fine, lack of ability to walk on snow aside. She began heaving herself off the ground, only to gasp and sit down hard again as her ankle twinged in a not inconsiderable amount of pain. She tested it again, and her own hiss of pain informed her there was essentially no chance of it being walkable right now. 

_Hm. This was not an optimal situation. And sitting on the ground was starting to get cold._

She considered calling out for help, before remembering it was barely 4:30 AM, and she was unlikely to wake anyone at this early of an hour. Resigned, she flipped onto her knees, pulled her sleeves over her hands to prevent the ice burning into her palms, and began crawling back to her house. The ground was hard, and freezing, and she tried multiple times to at least hop on one foot, but another near-fall later left her crawling and grumbling to herself. The ice was quickly soaking through Lena’s sleeve-mittens, and she’d stopped to try and to warm herself up when she realized it was not quite so silent behind her anymore.

There was a low growl, and the crunching of snow, and Lena froze more than the weather had her frozen already. 

_Weren’t there bears here? What kind of bears were in Alaska? Would they be so close to the town? What was she thinking, jogging so early in the morning and without telling anyone--_

Her trepidation was quickly interrupted by a gentle laugh. A woman’s laugh.

“Well you’ve certainly found yourself in a slippery situation, haven’t you?”

**Author's Note:**

> Hey folks! I'll be alternating the point of view between Kara and Lena throughout the story, but these first few chapters will probably be Lena only. Planning on this being a slow, slow burn. Let me know what you think!


End file.
